Quote: (10-27-2017 03:14 AM)RatInTheWoods Wrote:
I think I would prefer to get a blonde haired dictionary to teach me a word after each bang.
I don't know about you, but I'd like to learn more than 7 words per year.
I'm the King of Beijing!
Quote: (10-27-2017 03:14 AM)RatInTheWoods Wrote:
I think I would prefer to get a blonde haired dictionary to teach me a word after each bang.
Quote: (10-26-2017 09:19 AM)TripleG Wrote:
One of the posters earlier mentioned that just because you've "immersed yourself in a language" by living in that country doesnt mean youll get very far if you dont step out and actually get into social circles. Online apps and memorizations will only go so far... Just wanted to share a short story of mine...(Not really related to Russian although i speak it well). I relocated from USA to Austria and been studying German for 3 months now almost every day.
I thought i had small talk mastered but low and behold today while walking on the street a chick asked me for directions and I froze. Then i rambled in broken German directions and realised I got the turns wrong...she realized i was not making sense and said something like "nevermind". I tried to stop her and switch to English but she walked away. Although i was upset with my lack of language skills i went home that night and continued memorizing words and directions. Moral of the story is that no matter what foreign language you pickup you need to learn mistakes from your daily interactions, write them down and as part of your "mental homework" correct them. Then rinse and repeat. Im pretty sure now next cute chick that asks me for directions will not only get them but will also get my number
Quote: (10-27-2017 08:06 AM)bucky Wrote:
Or here in Central America, I hear locals who know English say things like "I have two years working here" which reminds me that that's the most natural way to say it in Spanish ("Yo tengo dos años trabajando aqui" instead of "Yo he estado trabajando aqui dos años.").
Quote: (10-27-2017 11:25 AM)Gopnik Wrote:
Quote: (10-27-2017 08:06 AM)bucky Wrote:
Or here in Central America, I hear locals who know English say things like "I have two years working here" which reminds me that that's the most natural way to say it in Spanish ("Yo tengo dos años trabajando aqui" instead of "Yo he estado trabajando aqui dos años.").
It might be a dialect thing, but "tengo dos años trabajando aqui" sounds wrong to me and Spanish is my native language.
"He estado trabajando aqui dos años" is good, but the more natural way to say that would be with the verb "llevar" (literally, "to take", "to carry"):
Llevo aquí dos años trabajando.
Llevar + the gerund + time expression (e.g. Llevo trabajando/viviendo/pensando 2 años/3 horas/5 minutos etc)
This is the equivalent of "To have been doing something" (e.g. I've been living here for 2 years) and is pretty universal across Spanish dialects.
Quote: (10-28-2017 07:22 AM)Stallion Wrote:
Quote: (10-27-2017 11:25 AM)Gopnik Wrote:
Quote: (10-27-2017 08:06 AM)bucky Wrote:
Or here in Central America, I hear locals who know English say things like "I have two years working here" which reminds me that that's the most natural way to say it in Spanish ("Yo tengo dos años trabajando aqui" instead of "Yo he estado trabajando aqui dos años.").
It might be a dialect thing, but "tengo dos años trabajando aqui" sounds wrong to me and Spanish is my native language.
"He estado trabajando aqui dos años" is good, but the more natural way to say that would be with the verb "llevar" (literally, "to take", "to carry"):
Llevo aquí dos años trabajando.
Llevar + the gerund + time expression (e.g. Llevo trabajando/viviendo/pensando 2 años/3 horas/5 minutos etc)
This is the equivalent of "To have been doing something" (e.g. I've been living here for 2 years) and is pretty universal across Spanish dialects.
I'm a native (Castillian) speaker and "tengo dos años trabajando aqui" sounds horrible to me. I have plenty of South American friends and none of them would ever say this.
Maybe it's limited to a few Central American regions? I know some people use this structure in Mexico. But to others it just sounds low class and uneducated.
Spanish dialects are much trickier than native English speakers tend to assume.
Back to the original topic... if you find Russian hard, try Czech! at least you can find hundred of resources for Russian.
For Czech I could only find 3 different grammar books, and they are all horrible.
Quote: (10-27-2017 06:00 AM)Beirut Wrote:
Bucky of course pimsleur gets you from point 0 to point x.
My point was that other ways with the same amount of time would get you from point 0 to point x+y
I did pimsleur and Michel Thomas and memrise and Anki and all.
Pimsleur is the worst for Russian. Even if you memorize it all you would not get further than first 2 mins of conversation unless you're discussing airplanes landing for an hour.
Quote: (10-29-2017 06:57 AM)Arado Wrote:
Not sure if this is the right thread, but I'm trying to maintain my Russian. Anyone have recommendations for good sources for English movies dubbed into Russian (willing to pay) or quality Russian serials/movies/entertainment shows? I already listen to news broadcasts and can get over 50% of the content but want to supplement that with everyday type speech. In daily life I rarely encounter Russians so I just want to maintain my listening ability for now.
Quote: (10-29-2017 07:33 AM)Gopnik Wrote:
Quote: (10-29-2017 06:57 AM)Arado Wrote:
Not sure if this is the right thread, but I'm trying to maintain my Russian. Anyone have recommendations for good sources for English movies dubbed into Russian (willing to pay) or quality Russian serials/movies/entertainment shows? I already listen to news broadcasts and can get over 50% of the content but want to supplement that with everyday type speech. In daily life I rarely encounter Russians so I just want to maintain my listening ability for now.
I personally watch кухня on youtube (a russian comedy series). There's also готель элеон from the same producers and Бригада, which is a famous series about the mafia in the late 90s/early 2000s.
For movies, I'd reccommed брат (1 & 2), война and неадекватные люди. They are all on youtube as well. Операция ы is also good, probably the most famous movie of the Soviet era.
Вечерний Ургант is sort of like a late night talk show. At one point they had Floyd Mayweather as a guest.
Quote: (10-29-2017 07:33 AM)Gopnik Wrote:
Quote: (10-29-2017 06:57 AM)Arado Wrote:
Not sure if this is the right thread, but I'm trying to maintain my Russian. Anyone have recommendations for good sources for English movies dubbed into Russian (willing to pay) or quality Russian serials/movies/entertainment shows? I already listen to news broadcasts and can get over 50% of the content but want to supplement that with everyday type speech. In daily life I rarely encounter Russians so I just want to maintain my listening ability for now.
I personally watch кухня on youtube (a russian comedy series). There's also готель элеон from the same producers and Бригада, which is a famous series about the mafia in the late 90s/early 2000s.
For movies, I'd reccommed брат (1 & 2), война and неадекватные люди. They are all on youtube as well. Операция ы is also good, probably the most famous movie of the Soviet era.
Вечерний Ургант is sort of like a late night talk show. At one point they had Floyd Mayweather as a guest.
Quote: (10-29-2017 07:33 AM)Gopnik Wrote:
Quote: (10-29-2017 06:57 AM)Arado Wrote:
Not sure if this is the right thread, but I'm trying to maintain my Russian. Anyone have recommendations for good sources for English movies dubbed into Russian (willing to pay) or quality Russian serials/movies/entertainment shows? I already listen to news broadcasts and can get over 50% of the content but want to supplement that with everyday type speech. In daily life I rarely encounter Russians so I just want to maintain my listening ability for now.
I personally watch кухня on youtube (a russian comedy series). There's also готель элеон from the same producers and Бригада, which is a famous series about the mafia in the late 90s/early 2000s.
For movies, I'd reccommed брат (1 & 2), война and неадекватные люди. They are all on youtube as well. Операция ы is also good, probably the most famous movie of the Soviet era.
Вечерний Ургант is sort of like a late night talk show. At one point they had Floyd Mayweather as a guest.
Quote: (10-27-2017 06:00 AM)Beirut Wrote:
Bucky of course pimsleur gets you from point 0 to point x.
My point was that other ways with the same amount of time would get you from point 0 to point x+y
I did pimsleur and Michel Thomas and memrise and Anki and all.
Pimsleur is the worst for Russian. Even if you memorize it all you would not get further than first 2 mins of conversation unless you're discussing airplanes landing for an hour.
Quote: (11-02-2017 02:06 PM)Dirkus Wrote:
Quote: (10-27-2017 06:00 AM)Beirut Wrote:
Bucky of course pimsleur gets you from point 0 to point x.
My point was that other ways with the same amount of time would get you from point 0 to point x+y
I did pimsleur and Michel Thomas and memrise and Anki and all.
Pimsleur is the worst for Russian. Even if you memorize it all you would not get further than first 2 mins of conversation unless you're discussing airplanes landing for an hour.
I concur with you entirely about Pimsleur.
I'm working through Russian Accelerator myself (which so far I don't think has been mentioned) - it's a paid online course using contextual learning via pictures and video, it's very slow and steady but actually gives you super literal translations of words and sentences. The guy is an American who taught himself Russian, lived in Sevastopol and has a Ukrainian wife. His teaching style is really easy to follow. IMO, this is the best course out there for beginners.
The problem with Pimsleur is it doesn't give you any super literal translation - it just gets you to parrot phrases ad nauseum - sure that's great, but you'll never understand why it's phrased in that way. It's literally just parroting directly from English - and obviously English doesn't translate directly from Russian. You don't say "I like guitar" in Russian - you literally say "To me is pleasing guitar" (mne nrahvitsa guitara). Pimsleur will never explain that to you.
Sure, it's not entirely "useless" - if you work at it every day for 3 months unquestionably you will progress and get value out of the program. I'm just saying that it doesn't give you grammatical context and / or explain anything to you at all really. There are just simply better uses of your time. For me, I don't want to just "learn phrases" (although that's huge), but I want to also understand from the ground up how and why sentences are structured the way they are.
Also, Michel Thomas is a solid course and undeniably better than Pimsleur. But it's not without its faults either. MT advocates this "no homework, no writing" policy .. which really is bullshit. You need to read and write ASAP, and cover all pathways in learning. I'm actually going back over the Advanced course now and taking notes and points that Natasha (the instructor) makes and writing out the translations again just to get more out of it. I'll do the same with Vocab course too.
Props to you bucky - that's an inspirational post man. I definitely like the look of preply.com - I think I'm not far off being ready to get something out of regular conversation with natives. I agree it sounds like the best way to get cheap practice in with actual teachers who are paid to listen to newbie Russian.
Quote: (11-02-2017 07:31 PM)Beirut Wrote:
I totally agree. I only mentioned Michel Thomas as a better alternative in case someone wants that same format.
Neither would be my choice of how to spend my time learning if i had to do it over again. Theyre a waste of time and when compared to other tools, the opportunity cost of that time is too high.
Quote: (11-03-2017 03:37 AM)Dirkus Wrote:
^Russian Accelerator. It destroys Pimsleur. But hey .. this argument is mental masturbation for the most part. The fact is the deciding factor on whether you’ll learn the language or not won’t be whether you use one system or another - it will be your staying power and willingness to show up day after after day after day until such time it’s a part of you. You’ve clearly proven you’re in that category bucky - so no matter what avenue you took you’d still learn it simply cause you have that staying power.
Quote: (11-02-2017 02:06 PM)Dirkus Wrote:
You don't say "I like guitar" in Russian - you literally say "To me is pleasing guitar" (mne nrahvitsa guitara). Pimsleur will never explain that to you.
Quote: (10-30-2017 02:19 PM)potential1 Wrote:
Anyone got any thoughts on learning the cases? What importance do you attach to it? The reason I ask is that whenever I have a lesson, the whole thing often seems to be bogged down with minute details of the cases.
Russian teachers seem to have decided that the cases are the most important thing. But seeing as I only want Russian for social situations, I always feel like it's not that important at my stage of learning - I just want more useful phrases and vocabulary to help me make myself understood. If I say vrach or vrachom doesn't seem that vital at my early stage of learning.
Obviously I hope to master it, but it feels like the kind of thing that could be picked up and perfected further down the road.